Automated Graphic Design

There’s also light-field cameras that let you adjust focus after the photo was taken and before photo editing.

Yeah, there are lots of fixes and adjustments that can be done in post-production (and some that can’t), but it’s best to get things as close as possible during the shoot. With a totally automatic camera with no manual settings, those Photoshop adjustments could take a whole lot longer than, say, just stopping down the aperture, adjusting the focus or deciding to use natural light with a reflector instead of an automatic flash.

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No, not so.

Not everything can be fixed. If you need sharp action but you didn’t use a fast enough shutter speed to freeze the action, there’s no fixing that. You can’t add sharp detail back in.

Even adding blur can be hard to do well, without adding funky halo pixels around the edges. You can’t always successfully add blur that looks like a shallow depth of field. Much easier to use an aperture that captures it.

Plus, as Mr-B said, Photoshop adjustments take a lot longer than just getting the shot right in the first place. One can spend hours trying to fix something, with every change degrading image quality. While changing the shutter speed or aperture takes less than a second.

Suppose you’re going to photograph 100 items for ebay. Is it better to get everything set up correctly first and zip through them, or to fix each individual image? If the shooting conditions are correct to begin with, you can fly through the post processing with ACR and/or actions.

I would not respect any photographer who didn’t sweat getting the photos “just right.” I’m sorry (not really), but that’s just sloppy and lazy. Not cost-effective, either - it’s far more efficient to just get the shot right, and not have to do a ton of post-processing.

You quoted StudioMonkey, of course, not me. You knew that already, but just for the record. :wink:

I’m sorry Mr-B, I did know I was quoting StudioMonkey, but selected the quote in the wrong place.

My apologies!

I have a good dozen or so clients who started off all happy DIY with their own free WP theme … lol :slight_smile:

And everything was going great … until they updated their theme/plugins … lol :slight_smile:

WordPress DIYer’s don’t usually bother with creating a child theme … lol :slight_smile:

Almost as bad as my clients who started all cheerful with a template site from one of the many template farms … lol :slight_smile:

Accessibility? Sceen readers? Who would ever care about a horrible SEO ranking due too this that and the other thing … what was that again???

Along with my 20+ years as a freelance graphic designer I’m also fully fluent in HTML, CSS, Javascript and PHP …all for good reason!

Just love those DIYers!!!

I agree of course, but my point is that this may be the new normal. I draw the analogy with litho printing when digital came in - everybody said there’s loads of things digital can’t do and they were right, but those things have either disappeared or become very expensive because only small shops are doing them.

Manual versus automatic transmissions might be another example of this phenomena. For some purposes, manual transmissions are superior, yet they’ve been nearly replaced by automatics — even in those vehicles where manual transmissions would be the better (and cheaper) choice.

I could be wrong, but I doubt this phenomena will result in the disappearance of manual controls in professional-grade cameras. It’s already happened at the consumer level, of course, where point and shoot is just more convenient than fiddling around with a bunch of manual adjustments.

Professional photographers, as a general rule, need more control over their imagery. There might be a hundred ways to shoot a photo, and out of those hundred possibilities, a good photographer chooses the combination of settings best suited to produce the photo he/she has in mind. In the absence of that level of control, those hundred choices are reduced and restricted to whatever choices the camera’s algorithms think are best.

I’m not saying those manual settings won’t become more automated and computerized, but I am saying manual controls (or overrides) will always be necessary — at least up until the point where cameras can read photographers’ minds.

Digital has mainly provided a less expensive option for smaller-run and larger format jobs. As the technology improves and becomes even cheaper, it might eventually even largely replace offset — especially if the quality is better than offset (larger color gamut or higher printing resolutions, for example).

However, I’m having trouble thinking of any capabilities being given up in this transition (maybe I’m just not thinking hard enough). Instead, I’m only seeing increased possibilities.

Likewise, I can’t think of anything small shops are doing with offset to, um, offset these supposed things that digital can’t do (again, maybe I’m overlooking something). Small shops have resurrected letterpress to produce effects that neither offset nor digital can achieve, but I’m struggling to come up with those kinds of equivalencies in printed product dissimilarities between offset and digital printing.

Exactly.

Photographers who care about making high quality images would strenuously protest the loss of completely manual controls. And there’s a lot of us. :wink:

The thing offset can do that digital can’t, yet, is hit a wider gamut of spot colors. Digital can’t hit all the Pantones, Toyos, etc. A Spot color in digital is a 4-color mix, with varying results in the edge finish/registration of the ink shapes. You are using some form of halftone for mixing. I have used machines where you can see visible darker ink dots in some of the lighter Pantone mixes.

There is also a “feel” to an offset piece that isn’t translating to digital either.

I personally think a 3spot color job on an offset press speaks higher quality than digital. But there’s that quantity thing…

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Yes, that’s true.

Why do you think there aren’t digital printers capable of laying down spot colors? It would seem fairly simple to design a digital press capable of using Pantone or Toyo inks and toners if they existed.

One thing I miss with digital printing is the smell of freshly printed offset. :smile:

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There’re purported to be a few digital printers out there with a spot pot, which makes them pretty much a 4+1 printer. A lot of times that pot is just used for a varnish.
I think when someone commits to going digital, the last thing they want to be doing is mixing custom inks. And quite honestly, I think the skill required to actually mix those inks is dying with the technicians who age out of the industry. A lot of newer digital shops wouldn’t know a Pantone ink formula if it bit them, and no one wants to learn.

I don’t know about freshly printed offset. But I sure do love the smell of full-solvent ink on vinyl.
:+1:

Both are likely toxic and reducing our brain cells to mush. :frowning_face:

Don’t forget the intoxicating fragrance of dektol in the developer tray.

Did you ever look up all the chemicals used in developers, fixers and stop baths? I’m surprised any of us survived that soup of toxic fumes. I can’t say that I actually miss the combined smell of it all.

Gosh no, I wouldn’t dare look them up! Yikes. :stuck_out_tongue:

This is sheer nostalgia. The excitement of watching the print come up in the tray never waned…

But I’m actually pretty glad Photoshop came along, just so we aren’t dumping all those chemicals into the earth.

It’s far too late for my brain. Mush. All that’s left.

Photoshop and dumping of chemicals doesn’t equate. Unless you were flushing all your silver halides down the sink drain…

I certainly dumped a lot of darkroom chemicals down the drain, including potassium ferrocyanide. I used that for brightening highlights in fixed prints.

I had a color darkroom, too. Whole different bunch of chemicals! :stuck_out_tongue:

So I meant since digital photography and Photoshop came along, not much need for darkroom chemicals any more.

That “feel” is more data. Human senses sense more from raw data than what we can sense from reproductions of the same data. We can sense that information even if we can’t articulate what it is we are sensing. It’s a pattern of quality in data that has yet to be isolated by science. It’s the extra feeling of warmth we get when we eat real butter or listen to vinyl recordings.

Analog will always provide more data than digital. But with more data, you get more noise. It’s a tradeoff. Most people will opt for less noise than more data.

Perhaps the more important question is whether or not the small shops with the extra capabilities are actually using those extra capabilities for what they are worth. This depends on a number of things:

  1. Are there designers who are designing extra quality for those extra capabilities?
  2. Is the extra capabilities in the design preserved in the technical handling of the design?
  3. Is the extra quality being noticed by the audience?
  4. Is the extra quality enough to make the difference in audience choice over competing products?